CHAPTER 34

By the time Thomas knocked on Nora’s door and walked in, she was feeling a little better. She had curled up in a wicker chair on the veranda with a blanket wrapped around her. On the table next to her were a big cup of tea and a pastry, which she had crumbled into tiny pieces.

Her parents had taken the boys down to the harbor to give her some space and the chance to recover from the shock of finding Jonny’s body.

Nora really wished Henrik were home, but he was still out sailing. The regatta wouldn’t end until about five o’clock, and the idea of calling him on his cell phone when he was in the middle of a competition was out of the question.

She was so sick of his sailing that she could have screamed. Where was he when she needed him?

Even though there was brilliant sunshine outside, Nora was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. Her brain registered the fact that it was warm inside the house, but the goose bumps on her arms and legs told another story.

She couldn’t get the image of the dead body in the water out of her mind. Those unseeing eyes staring at her when she turned him over. A thin strand of hair bobbing up and down with the movement of the sea. A limp arm floating on the surface.

Who would dare to visit Sandhamn after this? Who would be next? What if a child were killed? She shuddered again.

When Thomas and his colleague had arrived in Trouville, they had quickly taken charge of the situation.

The other people on the beach had been asked to leave. An area covering half the shore had been cordoned off with police tape—a familiar sight to many residents of Sandhamn by this time.

Shortly after, a police launch appeared and moored by the rocks. The same rocks from which Nora had once dived for her bronze and silver medals.

The launch dropped off an investigative team that quickly went to work. When photographs had been taken from every possible angle and any piece of available evidence had been secured, they respectfully prepared the body for transportation to Stavsnäs, where a hearse was waiting.

Thomas called Nora’s parents, who cycled over to pick up the children. Lars and Susanne looked around with horrified expressions but did their best to remain calm. The boys didn’t want to go. There were far too many exciting things going on. There were police officers everywhere by this stage, and Adam could hardly wait to tell his friends at swimming lessons about the big police launch.

In the end, Thomas spoke to them in his most authoritative police officer’s voice in order to get them to cooperate; the fact that they were also promised big ice cream cones probably helped, too.

Once the boys had gone off with their grandparents, Thomas gently asked Nora a few questions. Then he told her to go home and rest. Quietly think over everything that had happened.

They agreed that Thomas would stop by later so she could tell him in more detail about how she had found the body and what she had seen.

While she was waiting for Thomas, she fell asleep and dreamed that she was desperately swimming to reach the shore, while unattached legs and arms floated around her. The water was red with blood, staining her bikini.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Thomas began.

He had made a fresh pot of tea and settled down in a white wicker chair next to Nora on the veranda. The only sound was the gentle ticking of the kitchen clock. He waited patiently for her to find the right words.

After a while she began a hesitant account of the whole course of events, from seeing the odd, motionless shape in the water to the moment Thomas arrived.

“Did you notice whether the body was floating from a particular direction?” he asked.

Nora closed her eyes, her expression uncertain. “He was just lying in the water. There was hardly a breeze.”

“Was there anyone else on the beach who could have thrown him in?”

“There was hardly anybody there when we arrived. I noticed two or three people over toward the little beach but nobody on the side where he was floating.”

“And you didn’t see any boats that could have dumped the body in the water?”

Nora looked doubtful. “It was really quiet. I remember thinking we were early, because there were so few people on the beach.”

She fell silent, as if she were trawling through her memory. Then she told him about the bright sunshine that had almost dazzled her as she tried to make out the shape. “I didn’t really see anything else.”

“Do you remember anything unusual, anything that seemed out of place?” Thomas leaned forward. “Try to remember everything you can. Someone you didn’t recognize, or someone behaving oddly.”

Nora plucked at the Kleenex in her hand. Little bits of white fluff were starting to come off; it wilted immediately in the face of Nora’s despair.

In his mind’s eye Thomas could see Kicki Berggren sitting opposite him just a couple of weeks earlier, shredding a paper tissue in exactly the same way as she learned of her cousin’s death.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said, “but I can’t remember anything special. Nothing that might explain how Jonny ended up in the water.” She started to cry again, clutching the teacup with both hands. “It just feels so unreal. I can’t believe Jonny’s dead.”

Thomas patted her hand. “I know. This sort of thing just shouldn’t happen. If I knew who was behind it I’d put a stop to it, I can promise you that.” He sank back in the chair and linked his hands behind his head. He was worried about Nora. She looked pale and frozen beneath her tan. The shock was clear in her slow movements. Her eyes were crimson from crying, and her nose was swollen.

“When will Henrik be back? I don’t want you to be alone.”

Nora shrugged. “I expect he’ll be back in a few hours. But I’ll be fine—don’t worry. The boys are with Mom and Dad. I can easily go over there if I need some company.” She grabbed a fresh tissue and blew her nose. “I think I might try to get some sleep, actually. You go—I know you’ve got things to do.”

Thomas gave her an encouraging nod. “A few hours of sleep will do you good. Call me if you think of anything or if you just need to talk. I’ll keep my phone on. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll call you in the morning.”

Thomas stood on the steps for a moment, weighing his phone in his hand as he wondered whether to call Henrik or not. He was always pleased to see Henrik and Nora, but right from the start Thomas had been aware of a kind of resistance on Henrik’s part, something that stopped Thomas from feeling relaxed in his company. It was as if Henrik couldn’t quite come to terms with the solid, understated friendship between Nora and Thomas. Thomas didn’t think Henrik was jealous; it was more as if their friendship somehow encroached on the private territory that Nora’s husband believed should be reserved for a marriage.

There was an underlying distance between the two men that never quite disappeared in spite of the fact that they had known each other for a long time. Henrik’s upper-middle-class background and deeply conservative values didn’t exactly improve matters.

On top of that, Henrik was a doctor and was used to everyone listening to him whenever he had something to say. There was an element of authoritativeness in him that sometimes annoyed Thomas. And the way in which Henrik would interrupt Nora in the middle of a sentence or the irritation that was apparent when she didn’t always agree with him made Thomas wonder occasionally about the balance within their relationship.